Welcome to Fast Forward: Conversations about Work, <spanHome, and Life in our Accelerated Age. My guest this week is Chris Lawrence, vice president of the Mozilla Leadership Network. We are not in PC Mag labs. If you hear hammering, if you hear people talking, it's because we are in The Glass Room in SoHo here in New York City. We're going to talk about digital privacy, we're going to talk about the future and the health of the Internet, and we're going to talk about what you personally use to keep yourself safe while you're traveling.

Dan Costa:

First we've got to explain why we are here in this glass room. It looks like we're in an Apple store. But nothing is being sold here.Just explain what The Glass House is, and sort of what the mission is behind it.

Chris Lawrence:

Sure, well Baratunde Thurston actually said about this space, that if the show Black Mirror had a storefront, this would the storefront. I think what he was talking about was this sort of dystopian view of the future, these sort of cautionary tales, and this is where this all comes to life. Mozilla's really doing this because we want to spark of conversations, we want people to think about the implications of their digital choices, about where their data goes, about who's in control of that.

These are sometimes very complicated issues, they don't really land with folks that easily. Things like this, where you can, an object or an art that's provocative, that's satirical, that's funny, lets people engage with the content. Something like right over here, where you could read an article about LinkedIn losing a million passwords or having them hacked, but to actually sit there and rifle through a book, it's a lot creepier and disturbing experience than reading a Tech Crunch article.

Dan Costa:

It's easier to search for it online, but you can actually find your password if it was leaked, in one of those bound books. For those of us that aren't watching in video and are listening only on audio, we're in a vast, white room, looks like a gallery space, looks like an art opening, with a variety of installations created by different artists that basically highlight one particular facet of living in our digital world. We're actually standing over a 3D-printed model of Mark Zuckerberg's house under glass. The card explains that Mark Zuckerberg bought all these houses around him and basically emptied them out<span, so that he could have privacy. At the same time, we're all living in a world with very little privacy, and you could actually find a Google Map of his region of his home, and create a 3D model of it. Just one of the examples of the digital being made physical in this space. Do you have any other exhibits that you think are really neat?

Chris Lawrence:

A bunch of them, actually. I mean, this one over here, which is a knock off pair of Kanye West sneakers, and what the curators did to put that piece together was they just had a bot that shopped on the Dark Web, and then they would get I think a thing a week, so to speak. The kind of strange things that would show up at their office, it's brave to do in terms of who might be tracking those. This one really captured their fancy. It was basically a bootleg pair of Kanye sneakers, the kind of random stuff that they brought in kind of told you about what was out there, and about what you can find and what can be duplicated.

Dan Costa:

It's also sort of counter-expectations. You hear "Dark Web," and you hear bots making automated purchases, you think, "Oh, you're going to get drugs, you're going to get guns, you're going to hire a hit-man on the Dark Web." Actuallymost of it is banal knock-off Kanye sneakers.

Chris Lawrence:

Yes, which we could get just about 10 blocks from here as well.

Dan Costa:

Yeah, they probably made it all the way around, through the Dark Web, from Canal Street, back to this particular venue. There's a lot of resetting expectations about what living in the digital world is all about, but if I could say there's one theme throughout the exhibit, it's one of digital tracking. The glass house name obviously refers to exposing lots of information to the world. I feel like that's something that most American consumers, they sort of know it's happening, but they don't know how it really affects them. What are your opinions on, are Americans aware enough about what their digital footprints are leaving behind?

Chris Lawrence:

I think the answer is probably no, but what's interesting is I think they're quickly getting interested. Whether it's stories about what happens to their data, it's stories around NSA tracking meta-data on phones, I think the awareness of these social issues is starting to break through, and they're curious. I know this is a small sample size here at the glass room, but we've had anywhere from 500-700 people a day, highs on the weekends, on a Saturday is around 1,000. That's a lot of interest in a small little gallery here in Nolita. There's a hunger, there's a curiosity, current events are probably driving that.

Pew just did some research a little while ago, and they did find that 86% of Americans were taking some form of action to mask their digital footprint, and over 65% of responders thought it was very important to know who was getting their data and have some control over how they use that data. I think we're seeing growing momentum on this but, "Is it too late?", may be one question and, "What are we doing?", whether it's Mozilla, the tech industry, education, media, to actually help people understand that and be informed. Because it's going to take of public education efforts to make these issues tangible.

Dan Costa:

I've got to say, this is late in the showroom's run, it's been open for a couple of weeks, it is the middle of the afternoon here. Most people should be at work, and there is somebody in front of every single exhibit in this room, and there have been for the last hour and a half since I've been here. There is a lot of interest, and there's not a lot of signage. People are discovering it sort of organically, so there's definitely interest.

Chris Lawrence:

Oh, for sure. Our tactical tech did design it for having that storefront appeal, but we've been <spanamazed, if you just look around in here. It doesn't feel that different from an Apple store where you're waiting for your Genius bar or looking to play with the newest device. It has that kind of energy, both from a design and also the way that people are using it. Yeah, I don't know where these people are supposed to be at work on the afternoon, so we'll see. This is actually an extra week, we were actually supposed to close just a few days ago. We extended it this week, and we knew probably two weeks was not enough, but you also don't know how it's going to be received. We had an idea

Dan Costa:

You work for Mozilla, I imagine you use Firefox. What other tools do you use personally to sort of protect your personal data? Where on the spectrum do you fall in terms of paranoia?

Chris Lawrence:

I'm kind of famously not very tinfoil hat, in fact sometimes I think that makes me a little bit more similar and empathetic to the folks that we're trying to educate and work with, because I do come from this magical world of delights around technology that's connected us to people, that entertains us, et cetera et cetera. I feel like I understand that conversation, but what I have done personally is, and I think what most of us can start doing tomorrow, and whether that's in Firefox or in another browser, is most of these tools have privacy and security settings that most people don't even know exist or how to use them or how to set them.

First thing I do is just make sure that the things that I do use on a regular basis, I've set those things how I want them to be. Mozilla does have a new product for the mobile phone we call Firefox Focus, which I think is a really neat little innovation in that it's one-button click to dump all of your browsing <spanhistory, and just kind of wipe it away. It almost game-

Dan Costa:

I don't know why we haven't ... Well, I actually know exactly why we haven't seen it before. We haven't seen it before because it's in the financial interest of browser manufacturers to use that information and that ability to supply to advertisers in order to make money. That's why we haven't seen it before. Most people know that there's a way to clear your browser history<span, and that you should also clear your cache, but it would be very easy for Microsoft or Google to offer the same feature, but they won't because there's a financial incentive not to do so.

We do think that's what differentiates Mozilla in that we don't have those fiscal motivators to do those things. We are concerned about a healthy and open Internet, we do think about user rights. Those things are central to our values as an organization. Maybe we have the affordances to put of tools in, but it also means that we should be the ones that should be, and be more proactive even than sometimes that we have been in the past.

Dan Costa:

On the flip side, you allude to this, that all of this information is helping vendors create a better digital experience for us. The reason Facebook is so addictive is it's constantly adjusting to our needs. The reason our search results are so great is because Google knows exactly what you're searching for and what everybody else is searching for, it is delivering really good results. I work in the media industry, if everybody starts using Ad Blocker and Ghostery, I'm going to have a hard time paying my writers to create new and original content. How far is too far, and how do you feel about Ad Blockers in particular?

Chris Lawrence:

Those are all great questions. I think it's a balance, obviously. I think as a digital society and the laws and policies that govern that, we're going to have to find an equilibrium. Because Mozilla in no way wants to stand in front of content holder and publisher rights to make money off the content that they want to make, but we also have to be conscious and think of that as an ecosystem, where both are benefiting if people are having such horrible online experiences that they just start leaving online in general, because the experience is so bad.

What is that equilibrium there? I think that's got to be a conversation, it's why things like the glass room are so important because it's not heavily didactic. It's not saying, "You should do this," it's saying, "What are the implications of our choices, and then how do we enter a conversation to come up with what the new normal might be?" I don't think we've had of conversations about the new normal in any kind of way, and this kind of protectionism, whether it's the hyper-paranoid user rights or whether it is the content and holders rights or the publisher's rights, haven't really been able to engage in that conversation that's going to get to that equilibrium.

We see places like Forbes and The Atlantic start to block content of people that have Ad Blockers, and so it's probably going to force these conversations, or else we'll just be more segmenting ourselves into our own, where it's beyond the filter bubble almost, it's almost in our values bubble about what we'll interact with.

Dan Costa:

You've used the terminology about thinking about the health of the Internet, the overall health of the Web, and you see Mozilla as one of the stewards of that health and at least telling people what a healthy system should look like, and to help explore it. Can you just break down what makes a healthy internet? What do you think those goals should be?

Chris Lawrence:

We come from a place where we really believe that the Internet is an open global public resource that's drastically democratized information flow, communication, a bunch of other things, and that that public resource, almost like how cities and states and governments protect green spaces because they really are so important, and people bring their own needs into those spaces. Someone has to watch that and balance what that health is. That's why we like to talk about it in an ecosystem way, because where something might be very healthy, something else might be sick, and we have to understand that balance.

We really define it right now with five issues. Those are privacy and security, so what's that like? Issues that glass room is looking at. Two is centralization, just like in our media culture, the more we've had fewer and fewer media companies controlling everything, that's dangerous for the marketplace of ideas, for new thought, et cetera. We can't let the Web just centralize, and right now we see a lot of gatekeepers maybe not about owning the whole web, but definitely your entry point into the Web.

Dan Costa:

You talk about Facebook largely, that it's become the new source for the vast majority of consumers, and it is not the open Web. There's a diversity of opinion on Facebook, but there's not a diversity of opinion guaranteed in your Facebook feed.

Chris Lawrence:

Right, the algorithm definitely disrupts that. There's not only just that sort of

Dan Costa:

Right now, their business model is to give Facebook away for free, and then if you want to get access to the rest of the Web, then you're going to have to pay. That's a complete all of our experience here in the United States anyway.

Chris Lawrence:

It's really interesting to see how they play that out in places where they're new, and where the Web is new. The other three that are really important to us is obviously open innovation. One of the things that gave this sort of Web revolution, Web 2.0, whatever you want to call it, was that the platform was open and people knew how to build on top of it. It came from the edges, it gave us the Mark Zuckerberg and his 42 houses here. We have to protect that open innovation system. Then all need to participate, so digital inclusion, it can't be a space only for certain people.

Then maybe the thing that I'm most passionate about and I think that undergirds a lot of what we're talking about is Web literacy. We're going to need Web-literate citizens who can make these choices with some level of education and sophistication. They may choose to opt-in to giving away their data, but they should understand that, and that's where Web literacy looks at how you critically read the Web, then how you understand it's a writeable space. You can do stuff on it, it's not just read. Then really, probably most importantly, how people participate in the right ways.

Dan Costa:

What do you think are the biggest gaps, let's just focus on Americans at this point, the biggest gaps in Web literacy for Americans? What is it that a lot of people just don't understand, and that you think would make a big difference if they knew how it really worked?

Chris Lawrence:

I think they don't know even just the basics of the browser, kind of even seeing where the URL thread can go, or reading just a level behind at the code. I'm not saying be deep in the nerd code, so to speak, but there are tells on something like fake news or what have you, where you can see ... I'm going to reference Kanye's fake shoes again. Most of us, whether it's a pair of sneakers or a Gucci bag, we know how to look for the missing stitch. We may opt, again, to buy the knock off handbag, but we have a sophistication about what to look for. I think that's just the structures and how the Web works is at

Yes, they're all over the place. In fact, if you just have a few little bits of knowledge, you can kind of wipe away a lot of that mystery. Just a little bit of Web literacy would kind of give all of our fake news BS detectors a boost, we'd be much more sophisticated even just knowing a few simple things. Some of that is what we try to get out there. Go deeper, obviously, but what is that kind of quick knowledge that people then be able to impart? Then also, it's like anything else, a little bit of knowledge is usually a positive slippery slope to wanting to know more and become more curious.

Dan Costa:

My thing that I always tell people is you have to understand when you agree to all those permissions on your Android phone, you're giving that software access to everything on your phone, in a lot of cases. No one ever looks at that screen, nobody really understands what it means, and then once you do it once, it's on your phone until you change your phone in. You're never going to go back into your privacy settings ... And I do it myself, I just click through, it's a game and I'm like, "Wait a minute, why does the game need to know my location?" It's because they can make money on advertising if they know my location. That's something that I think people still don't really realize. They know not to click on links and download virus-laden emails, but they don't understand the app threat.

Chris Lawrence:

Although, I don't know, as the news was telling us the last few days, even that gets dangerous. As you saw the pretty direct phishing scam that got through to the DNC's emails.

Dan Costa:

Yeah, basic phishing is still the most effective attack vector. There doesn't need to be a grand explanation for how it gets there, it's usually just an email. It's usually millions of emails, and then a couple thousand people fall for it.

Chris Lawrence:

Right, some weird law of averages, yeah.

Dan Costa:

That's security behavior, but it's the same thing, that's a great example of digital literacy. As part of Mozilla, we've got Chrome, which is a great browser, we've got Microsoft Edge, come a long way, come back from the bad dog days of Internet Explorer, why do we need Firefox in addition to those? And Safari, for Apple users.

Chris Lawrence:

Sure, and that's a good question. It's something I referenced a few minutes ago, <spanone, because you know that there isn't an overt profit motive directing where Firefox goes. It's not a publicly held organization, the nonprofit actually owns the corporation, its values are mission-driven. Of

As you said earlier, the idea to put a big fat dump everything after a session of browsing is easy to do technically, it's not a difficult piece of software, but it is difficult to do if that is antithetical to your business model. We aren't driven by those motivators, and in fact, for us, having those features actually helps us to gain the kind of market share and users that make us still attractive to having the kind of search deals and things that we can make revenue on. of consumer choices.

In some ways, it's not dissimilar to some values-based consumer choices that we all make on a regular basis, whether that's the organic food movement or of conscious choices on a regular basis. Why not on the digital tools they use?

Dan Costa:

In terms of if somebody, obviously using Firefox, recommendation number one, what else can people do to sort of educate themselves to support you guys and sort of create a healthier Internet?

Chris Lawrence:

<spanThere's many things, and we're running a bunch of programs to start to look at that, both from this, surface things, to deeper engagements. Doing of things is important for us, whether it's the glass room or it's our Mozilla festival that we do yearly in London, or some other conferences and convening events. The more we bring people together and have them work and play together and then share, that sort of face-to-face people interaction, this is still hyper important.

We also have a local organizing model which we call Mozilla Clubs, which we've launched globally. It's where students, youth, educators, adults are coming together and we're giving them the tools and the know-how, and sometimes micro-budgets, to come together and do local organizing in their communities, whether that's down the street or in India, or in Pakistan, all over Europe, coming together, teaching themselves digital literacy, finding an audience and who wants to learn this stuff.

Then third, we're doing public education campaigns. We want to get much more public and loud about these issues and get them into the public consciousness. Our goal really is to make this idea of Internet health-

Dan Costa:

We're live on location.

Chris Lawrence:

One just broke. This idea of Internet health is a top0ten social issue, just like clean water or recycling. We want that kind of recognition in the consciousness of citizens, of voters, of consumers, that really is our goal. These broad campaigns, whether it was last year we did it on encryption and we had a cute little Web app game called Code Moji that basically let you play with ciphers and encryption and using emojis to send encrypted things to friends. What are these kind of, sometimes I call it, "What's our 'Got Milk' for Internet health?"

Dan Costa:

If people want to know more information, how can they find you online, or feel free to give them out your cell phone number if you want to.

Chris Lawrence:

Right, I'm an open book.

Dan Costa:

How can they get in touch with you?

Chris Lawrence:

I think probably until it, Twitter's still around for a little while, so @ChrisLarry, like the two names, 33, is probably a great way. I'm on there pretty frequently, so that's a great way to connect with me, either by tweeting at me or direct messaging me there. I am happy to give out my email address, it's clawrence@mozillafoundation.org. We've got so many programs running here in New York City and then around the globe and ways to get involved. A lot of my work for Mozilla is actually activating people and getting people involved, and doing stuff at that kind of deeper engagement level. I'm happy to talk to anyone about how they might want to do that.

Dan Costa:

Very cool, it's a great exhibit, I had a blast talking to you and looking around. Thanks for putting it on.

Chris Lawrence:

Thanks for coming down, man.

Dan Costa:

Thanks for coming on the show, I appreciate it.

Dan Costa:

This has been Chris Lawrence, vice president of the Mozilla leadership network, and this has been Fast Forward. Thanks for joining us this week, we'll be back with a new show very, very soon. I'll see you in the future.

About the Author

Dan Costa is the Editor-in-Chief of PCMag.com and the Senior Vice President of Content for Ziff-Davis. He oversees the editorial operations for PCMag.com, Geek.com, ExtremeTech.com as well as PCMag's network of blogs, including AppScout and SecurityWatch. Dan makes frequent appearances on local, national, and international news programs, including ... See Full Bio

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